


The Physics of Falling in Love

by Zadabug98



Series: YOI One-shots [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: For the most part, Gen, Just a chill little ditty, Like if Yuuri and Mari were Sherlock and Mycroft, M/M, Mari's POV is so chill dude wtf, POV Outsider, She's just like "yeah I basically run the Japanese government. No biggie", Sherlock AU ish, Smart!Mari, Smart!Yuuri, Yuuri does Physics btw, and an AU that wouldn't get out of my brain, because i'm a toddler, but I haven't done Physics in like.... threeeee no fooooour years, but at the same time NOT AT ALL, ish, like same tho, rolemodel of a generation jc, so forgive me if my interpretation sounds like a toddler, when it comes to physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-07 13:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13435560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zadabug98/pseuds/Zadabug98
Summary: There’s a rumor in every major government facility in Japan that goes something along the lines of “if you’re ever in a tight spot, a trip to Yutopia Katsuki is just what you need”. On the surface, it’s a fairly mild rumor – soothing hot springs and calm, country air go a long way to clear the mind – but to those who’ve been there and shared a bar counter with the unassuming Mari Katsuki, Yutopia is truly a life saver.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little AU that I couldn't get out of my head, so I wrote a one-shot that I have no plans on continuing (for real this time, okay) but I hope you enjoy it.

Mari doesn’t know when she stumbled into the family habit of being too clever for their own good, but it probably has something to do with that time she rather crassly told Councilor Hashimoto what for that time he’d been sighing about some bill or another over a bottle of sake in the dining room. She’d paid attention in her government courses and watched the news semi-religiously since it always came on during her shifts at the bar, but apparently was the only one really understanding the intricacies of her own country’s government.

A week later she sees Councilor Hashimoto on the news, reporters praising the thought that must have gone into his new bill.

A day after that, she receives a bouquet of flowers with an unsigned thank you card attached.

It becomes a habit, after that, and the number of businessmen and high-profiling political figures that come through the doors of Yutopia Katsuki make the neighbors wonder if the Katsuki’s have started working for the Yakuza and Mari would laugh at that if she didn’t have all the local wakagashira on speed dial “in case you need _anything_ Mari-dono” but that’s neither here nor there, really. She’s just a Katsuki doing what Katsukis do best. She knows for a fact that her father’s been playing the stock market like a fiddle and giving most of what he earns from those deals back to local charities. Her mother, though she married into the deal, could probably beat Bobby Flay if she so wished – the world of Top Chefs and Iron Chefs is lucky she prefers onsen life, in Mari’s humble opinion.

Yuuri, though, Yuuri’s gift is smothered under layers and layers of anxiety and other interests. The kid could probably be an astrophysicist if he so chose but instead he turns his interests towards the ice. “There’s physics in figure skating, too, Mari,” he says one day as they both walk home from the rink. He’s been applying to colleges in America, hoping to take Celestino Cialdini up on his coaching offer next year. “I mean, jumps and spins are all about angles of entry and exit, inertia and velocity and momentum, it’s… thrilling.”

Yuuri’s face is bright and shining, but Mari can’t help but smirk. “Not as thrilling as seeing Viktor Nikiforov do it, though,” she says, and Yuuri sputters, face flaming red with embarrassment. But he nods, shyly, and Mari can’t hold back from ruffling his hair.

“You’ll get there, little bro,” she says. “How’s that essay going?”

And Yuuri groans, embarrassment over Viktor forgotten for his embarrassment over his truly horrendous writing abilities. “I could tell them all about the exact amount of force needed to complete a perfect triple axel, but I have no idea what life experiences I’ve had that will make me a good fit for their college. What does that even mean?”

Mari snorts, drawing out a cigarette and lighting up as they wait at a crosswalk. Her little brother, going off to America. Damn, she’s so proud.

 

* * *

 

 

She’s… not _less_ proud of her brother when he comes back home from America, but she’s definitely more concerned. She knows that Vicchan’s death was her fault and in a way therefore so was Yuuri’s loss at the Grand Prix Final, but she knows her brother too well to think he’d blame her for either of those. In all likelihood, he’s only blaming himself.

“It’s my fault,” he says later that night when she finds him sat in front of Vicchan’s memorial, she stands silently by the doorway and just listens. “If I had called more, or come back, maybe he wouldn’t have kept trying to run out and find me. I want to be angry at the car driver, because in most of the simulations I’ve run in my head the only way to have done that much damage to a healthy dog of Vicchan’s age and size is to have been going way beyond the speed-limit but I just can’t help thinking that it’s still my fault. Vicchan went looking for me. If I hadn’t left him alone for so long then maybe…”

And Mari sighs, stepping into the room to sit beside her baby brother and put a consoling hand on his trembling shoulder. “Vicchan wasn’t alone, Yuuri,” she says because it’s true. “He had me and mom and dad and everyone in the onsen looking after him and loving him just like you did. He missed you, sure, but you can’t shoulder all of the blame like that. I was the one watching him, it was my choice not to put him on a leash. Had I taken him out five minutes earlier, or five minutes later, or put him on a leash, or noticed that he’d gotten into the road, then Vicchan would still be here.”

Yuuri takes a shuddering breath, and Mari can do nothing but try her best to keep him from falling apart at the seams. “It does neither of us any good to worry about what-ifs, Yuuri,” she says. “What’s been has been, and now we need to move on.”

Yuuri takes a hiccupping, sobbing breath before he turns and collapses into her lap, sobbing his eyes out into the front of her shirt. She wonders as she strokes her fingers through his hair whether or not he’s truly let himself fall apart since he heard the news. The grip of his hands on the fabric at her back suggests that maybe he hasn’t, maybe he’s been grieving without release for months and her heart breaks for him.

“It’s alright, Yuuri,” she says softly, “it’s alright. Let it all out and then start fresh, Vicchan would’ve wanted you to smile.”

Yuuri sobs louder, but the line of his shoulders relaxes ever so slightly.

Mari will take what she can get.

 

* * *

 

A few days later, as she talks LGBT+ rights with Councilor Miyamura, she hears a scream from the hot springs and wonders vaguely if anyone thought to tell Yuuri that Viktor Nikiforov was in there.

“Anyway, Councilor,” she says as the voices down the hall become increasingly concerned-sounding, “you should really consider pushing for this. I know a lot of legislators who would gladly support you, but you’ve gotta be the one to make the first move.”

 

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov is not what Mari expects. She finds she doesn’t mind that much.

She also finds him halfway to drunk off his ass one evening when she comes into the dining room on her way to put up the last load of folded laundry. He looks up when she walks in but his attention is quickly reclaimed by the laptop in front of him and the very familiar figure skating across the screen.

When she comes back through his head is in his hands and she figures what the hell, Viktor Nikiforov’s problems couldn’t possibly be harder to figure out than Japan’s current socio-political climate. In the end, Viktor makes the first move, looking up as she sits down across from him with a look of bewildered anguish across his otherwise pristine features. Dammit if Mari doesn’t want to know what he uses to keep his skin so smooth.

“I don’t understand,” Viktor says, and yeah, Mari could’ve figured that out on her own, but she senses more to follow and stays quiet. “He’s practically flawless in practices, nailing jumps that even I don’t have a 100% accuracy on like it’s nothing but you put him in front of the smallest crowd and poof! All that talent, just gone up in smoke.”

 Mari nods. This is not news to her either. “He gets sucked into his own head,” she says, but Viktor just sighs explosively.

“I know that,” he says. “Everyone and their Minako won’t shut up about Yuuri’s anxieties and I may be ditsy sometimes but I’m not stupid. It just… feels like more than that.” He tinkers with his laptop for a bit, turning the screen so that she’s faced with a still of Yuuri mid-jump. Viktor points at his face and says, “That’s not the face of a man whose thoughts aren’t focused. I know what that looks like, I’ve been pouring over hours of footage with that face. This face, though, it’s like he’s… like he’s too focused.”

Mari hums and nods because it’s true and she’s really fucking impressed that Viktor picked up on it. Viktor himself just scowls at the screen a bit more, apparently satisfied with having ranted about his confusion to someone willing to listen, but Mari’s decided that while he may not be a Katsuki by blood, he’s at least showing signs of being clever enough to be welcomed into the fold.

“Viktor,” she says. “There’s something you need to know.”

 

* * *

 

Yuuri wakes up the next morning with a very excited Russian on his chest bouncing up and down in what he assumes to be excitement. “Yuuri!!” he screeches, “why didn’t you tell me you had a Ph.D in… what did Mari call it…”

“Applied Physics and Kinetics,” Yuuri automatically supplies, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he sits up. “Wait, why were you talking with Mari about my degrees?”

“Because I needed to figure out the face!” Viktor says, as if that explains anything, before – thankfully – going on to explain it. “You make a face when your skating sucks that isn’t your Anxious Face and I couldn’t figure out what it was! Mari helped me! It’s your Physics Face!”

Yuuri blinks. “I guess I do have a tendency to overthink my starting speed and angle of entry so much that a botch everything else…” He blinks again. “Huh. I never thought about that.”

Viktor nods, triumphant, and throws his arms around Yuuri’s neck. “You Katsuki’s are all geniuses, aren’t you,” he says, and Yuuri is helpless but to agree.

“Yeah,” he says, hand coming up to pat Viktor on the back. “I guess so.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You guys wanted more of this, so here you go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is for real the last of it. I really wanted to pull Yuri into the fray and you guys seemed to like it enough so I went ahead and did it instead of doing my homework. Again. 
> 
> I have not proofread this, so I apologize for any mistakes.

Mari gets a call a few weeks after Viktor shows up and the time of day plus the familiar ringtone means she doesn’t even look at the caller ID before picking up. “Katsuki-san,” a young woman on the other end of the phone says softly, voice harried as she tries to be heard over the loud, explosive Russian chiming in the background without yelling. “I have a young man here who says he knows your younger brother.”

Mari hums, pointing at the phone as she excuses herself from the bar, her father nodding in understanding as he takes her place with a riotous grin. She just hopes he doesn’t get roped into partaking this early in the evening. She gets the feeling that this isn’t just a social call from the lovely ladies in the Japanese Embassy in Moscow.

Yuri Plisetsky arrives in Yutopia Katsuki with a surprising lack of fanfare and a significant amount of teenage angst which is only marginally abated by the fact that Mari had made sure there was a clear room for him to stay in… on the opposite side of the inn from where Viktor was staying. When he asks why she simply shrugs and asks if he’d like a different room. His response is as expected.

 

* * *

 

Mari sees the whole Onsen on Ice thing coming before the words get plastered across the inn’s dining room. She seeks out Yuri, and finds him sitting on the back porch watching the koi swirl around the small pond in the backyard. The water is slightly warm from the hot springs year-round, so even though the ground is dusted with snow, they continue to swim.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” She says, in the casual way of older sisters who got used to stepping around an issue when dealing with anxious little brothers. If Yuri realizes her disinterest is feigned, he doesn’t let on.

“Ugh,” is his answer, and she leaves it at that until he elaborates a few minutes later. “I mean, all I really want is for Viktor to pull his head out of his ass and stop skating like he’s missing something.”

Mari nods, blowing the smoke in her lungs into the cool air of the open window. She keeps her eyes fixed on a particularly square-shaped arrangement of stars as she asks, “have you ever thought that maybe he skates that way because he is?”

Yuri is silent, but she knows she’s planted the seeds when he huffs and turns to look at the moon. Anyone else would think his face is pinched in anger, but Mari’s spent years puzzling the feelings out of her stubborn little brother through the exact angle of his pinched eyebrow. She knows that look.

“Just something to think about,” she says offhand on another ash gray exhale, “I heard mom’s making Katsudon for dinner, though, so you might want to get ready for dinner.”

Yuri blinks. “What’s cats-don?”

Mari smirks, stamping out her cigarette on the bottom of her shoe before tossing the butt in the little bin her mother keeps on the porch for that very reason. “Come to dinner and find out,” she says. And so he does.

 

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov, Mari has come to find out, is as dumb as a rock when it comes to anything that isn’t figure skating related in some way.

He’s also a wellspring of random knowledge for the exact same reason, which Mari discovers when he waxes on for a good half hour about the proper technique for knife throwing which he apparently knows how to do quite well. “It was for a program,” he says when Mari asks how he knows all these things. “I was playing the gallant assassin in Her Majesty’s Secret Service for my short a few years back.”

Yuuri hums, distractedly thoughtful as he picks at his rice. “2014,” he says. “Your theme was ‘more than meets the eye’.”

It takes him a minute to realize just what he’s said, and when he looks up he sees Mari’s teasing simper and VIktor’s ecstatic grin. “I have an eidetic memory!” he tries to protest. “It’s not like I was… which is to say, I,” but his attempts to deflect are thwarted by the large hug Viktor drags him into, cooing over how cute Yuuri is when he flushes.

Mari meets Yuri’s eye over their heads and nods sympathetically to his affronted scowl.

Poor kid, she things with a snort as she downs her drink and makes to take the dishes back to the kitchen. It’s only just begun.

 

* * *

 

Yuri “loses” the Onsen on Ice event, and Mari watches him leave the rink with a frown on her face. Again, she saw this coming as well. She ignores the rest of her little brother’s Booty Call on Ice in favor of going after him, and pats Yuuko on the shoulder when she sees the other girl have the same idea. “You stay here and help reign in your terrors,” she says with a smile. “I’ve got this one.”

Yuuko scoffs and smiles and slaps Mari on the shoulder in turn. “Alright,” she says, and goes back to cheering for her friend.

Mari sighs, drawing her scarf closer to her neck, and sets out to follow after the rambunctious little teenager that she’s quickly coming to regard as another little brother. “Hey,” she calls, once his tiny angry form is in sight. “What do you think you’re doing out here?”

Yuri scoffs and turns, suitcase clacking behind him. Mari takes one look at it and knows it’s not just his gear the same way she knows who’s going to win next season’s election and just how long it will take to get that same-sex marriage bill passed. Yuri scowls, but she also sees the way his eyes dart away from her face and back towards the rink, the way his lips purse at the sight of it.

He opens his mouth to response, primed and ready to scream all sorts of denials and vitriol at her and probably at her brother and Viktor and everyone with a hundred meters with a pulse and cognitive thought. Mari sighs and holds up a hand.

“Look,” she says. “I’ll be the first to admit that I know absolutely nothing about this figure skating thing. And maybe I don’t understand the subtleties of it the way I do gang politics,” and she waves away his suddenly concerned face. “Bad example.”

She huffs, one hand going to her hair while the other pats her back pocket for a cigarette. “Anyway,” she says as the lighter sparks and the nicotine starts puffing away into her bloodstream. “What you’ve got is good, kid, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few weeks it’s that Viktor Nikiforov is a goddamn idiot.”

Yuri snorts, and Mari smiles, and it’s good.

“Here’s an idea for you,” she says, because as always the way to get through to teenagers is to let them do it themselves. “Why don’t you come back to the rink with me, you don’t have to talk to anyone or anything. But maybe make an appearance. Accept your subjective loss gracefully,” Yuri snorts and Mari has to admit the image of an acquiescing Yuri is hilarious. “And then, when all is said and done, come back to the inn and partake of the celebratory katsudon. I’ll drive you to the airport myself in the morning, if you like.”

Yuri thinks about it, and Mari uses every diplomatic bone in her body to appear inviting but not coercing. Eventually, Yuri nods, turning his suitcase around to face the rink once more. “Why not,” he says, and then adds, “I’m only doing it for the katsudon,” as Mari swings her arm around his shoulder and leads them back.

“Sure, kid,” she says. And that’s that.

 

* * *

 

Yuri doesn’t really catch on to the Katsuki brand of weirdness until Viktor moves his silver medaling fiancé to St. Petersburg and tries to play at skater again.

If Yuri’s honest he’s pretty impressed by Viktor’s progress considering how many bowls of Katsudon he must’ve eaten in the past year or so. Yakov, however, if far from happy about any of it.

“Vitya!” he barks one day as he enters the rink, eyes glaring into Yuuri’s back where he stands watching Viktor skate figures across the ice. He’s got a clipboard in hand, but Yuri never paid much attention to it. He pays attention now though, as Yakov is making quite a scene. “I just got off the phone with the physical therapist and she says you still haven’t gone to see her!”

Viktor smiles, skating up to the barrier and speaking in English for Yuuri’s benefit. “Of course not, Yakov. I don’t need to.”

Yakov’s face turns a new shade of purple and Yuri skates closer so he can better recount the story to Mila later. She’ll hate that she missed it.

“Vitya!” Yakov booms. “How do you expect to get back into comptetition shape without seeing a physical therapist!? Your knees aren’t what they used to be, and I’ll be damned if I let your little game get you injured or worse!”

Viktor chuckles, laying his arm across the barrier so he can stick his hip out in what he must think is a sassy pose. Yuri just snorts.

“Yakov,” Viktor says patiently. “I said I didn’t need to see the _rink’s_ physical therapist. Not that I wasn’t seeing one at _all_. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

Yakov snorts. “Why would you need a different therapist?” he grumbles. “Ana is the best in all of Russia!”

Viktor snorts and winks at Yuuri who flushes immediately, clutching that damn clipboard to his chest. “She may be the best in Russia,” Viktor says, still setting bedroom eyes on his poor, flustered fiancé, “but I snagged myself one of the best in the whole wide world.”

Once Yuuri’s face could practically give a tomato a run for it’s money, Viktor shows mercy and shifts his gaze to Yakov once more. Yuri is riveted, Yakov is enraged.

“Oh,” Viktor says in mock surprise. “Did I never properly introduce you to him?” He straightens, gesturing from Yuuri to Yakov and back again as he says, “Yuuri, meet Yakov. Yakov, meet Dr. Yuuri Katsuki, Ph.D in Applied Physics and Kinetics with a focus in Physical Therapy.”

Yakov chokes.

Yuri pulls out his phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of really enjoy writing from Mari's POV, I may have to do it more. She's just so chill and older sister-y and I relate to it so hard it's not even funny anymore. The goal of an older sister is always to provide guidance without judgement and I think Mari gets that. She's so cool.
> 
> THank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. There will probably not be any more of this because the very small creative well of this story has dried up now that I've stuck Yuri into it. Thanks to all of you who left me comments and/or kudos on the last bit I really appreciate it. 
> 
> Stay safe!!

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this Sherlock-ish AU stuck in my head for like MONTHS so I finally did something about it and put it out there. It didn't really turn out to be the amazing story that's in my head but it's the only thing that I know how to do with it so I'm hoping it'll inspire someone else who can do this AU justice to give it a whorl and see what happens. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I know nothing about Japanese politics and did not even proofread this myself so if you see an error feel free to let me know.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please leave a Kudos or a comment if you enjoyed and maybe check out some of my other YOI one-shots in this handy-dandy series link I've got down below. They're all different stories so you can read them in any order, don't worry. Also, if you'd like, check out my YOI multi-chapter fic Adventures in Agape if you're into non-binary, ballet dancing Yuuri coaching everyone's favorite Angry Kitten in the ways of the Agapes.
> 
> Hope you have a great day!!!


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